The Best Free TV Streaming Sites in 2012

The rise of broadband in many country and regions around the world has opened up new possibilities for bandwidth intensive services on the Internet. TV Streaming services have sprung to life in the past years that often provide their users with access to free TV series and episodes. And while that is a good thing, the services more often than not restrict access to users connecting from a specific region or country.

The following guide looks at the best free web services that stream TV series and episodes. To be included in this list, the services need to offer free streams, and need to be on legal grounds in their country of origin.

Since this is an English website, we are concentrating on English television only. Feel free to add websites that offer television streams in other languages in the comments.

Free Sites that Stream TV

Hulu is probably the best known site when it comes to free TV streams. It offers access to many different TV shows, from shows that are currently airing to a back catalog of tv shows that were once popular. Free users get access to the five most recent episodes of tv shows that currently air in the U.S., and access to classic shows.

Hulu Plus is a subscription-based service that provides access to all episodes of the current season, as well as access to Hulu on game consoles and televisions, and high definition streams when available.

Shows available at the time of writing include Fringe, Grimm, Family Guy, The Office, Southpark, Law and Order, and dozens of other shows.

A family friendly TV streaming site. It currently offers access to the following shows: Jane by Design, The Lying Game, Make it or break it, Melissa & Joey, Pretty Little Liars, Switched at Birth, and The secret life of the American teenager.

Another U.S. only network streaming its shows on the Internet. Available shows include classic television series, like Simon and Simon, Magnum P.I. or The A-Team, as well as 2012 shows like Bent, 30 Rock, The Event or The Biggest Loser. It is interesting to note that NBC provides access to the full back catalog of many shows, and not only a show's current season.

You can watch tv shows that air on CBS on this site. Popular shows include The Big Bang Theory, Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds, all the CSI shows, How I Met Your Mother or Two and a half men. Access is again only available for users connecting to the site from the United States.

Here you find shows airing on the Warner Browser network. Shows available include both current season shows like Fringe or The Mentalist, but also classic shows like The Gilmore Girls, The O.C., Babylon 5 or Friends.

The site unfortunately does not offer access to the full back catalog of current or classic tv shows. You only find a handful of episodes available for streaming on the site.

This website offers BBC TV streams. Access is limited to the UK, but it is providing users with access to hundreds of programs.

TV Aggregators

1. Surf The Channel

This one monitors several streaming video sites, and maintains a database of tv shows, series and episodes that link back to destinations on the Internet where those shows are available as streams. It is mostly U.S.-based but you find British and Canadian offers there as well. Update: The service is no longer available.

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About Martin Brinkmann

Martin Brinkmann is a journalist from Germany who founded Ghacks Technology News Back in 2005. He is passionate about all things tech and knows the Internet and computers like the back of his hand.You can follow Martin on Facebook, Twitter or Google+

Comments

I watch almost all of my TV online. The only sites you really need are Hulu and CBS (Hulu carries no CBS shows). Unless you require the ability to watch Hulu on a device like Roku, I would skip paying for Hulu Plus (something like $8.99/month). I pay for it but it ticks me off because the free version gets you almost as much. If CBS had a Roku channel, that would be about perfect.

If it wasn’t for the NFL games on ESPN/NFLN and cable shows like Mad Men and Walking Dead, I would ditch paying for cable TV completely. There’s an MLB channel for Roku but I doubt it will ever exist for the NFL. Depending where you live, a cheap price (under $50) gets you a decent digital antenna that will pick up all of the major channels in perfect HD for free. I can only get NBC and Fox because my house has a lot of big trees around it. I also have Netlfix ($7.99/month) but it’s a toss-up between that and the free online content that comes with an Amazon Prime membership (about $80/year I think). I’m moving soon and decided to cancel Netflix. I’ll keep Prime because of the free 2-day shipping alone.

Hey Martin, allow me- In the US, the Major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX) are broadcast freely over the air along with PBS and some limited local programming depending on you’re area. It’s free and one just needs an antenna and a TV. Since the shift to digital, local TV stations have gained the ability to broadcast extra channels. Currently, I have 16 channels I can pick up freely over the air. Cable packages are purchased through a service provider and can offer hundreds of channels like CNN, Fox News, Comedy Central, Disney Channel, SCiFi, The Cooking Network, plus the major networks. Then there are the premium channels that can be added to a cable package like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Playboy, etc. Then there are also satellite services available like Dish Network and Direct TV. They are similar to cable in their channel offerings and that they require a subscription. Personally, I gave up paying for cable about five years ago. Between broadcast, netflix and a few other sites like veetle, I can watch just about anything I want. Like Bob mentioned, NFL is the most difficult to find without cable or satellite, they are pretty quick about getting streams shut down. So how is that different than how Germany handles TV?

Ed, it is pretty similar. You can get about 30 channels for about €20 per month over the air, including all major German channels plus CNN and a few others like Eurosport. From next year on, every German household will have to pay this, even if no TV is owned.

Standard cable gets you more or less the same channels, making it a different way of providing TV. You pay extra for cable access, and can add packages to your subscription that cost extra but give you access to more channels. You also got IP TV and Satellite options available, which more or less all offer you access to the same channels.

On top of all that, you got premium cable offerings which costs extra again, but gets you contents like live sports events, movies that have not been shown yet on free TV, or tv series.

If you would get it all, you’d probably spend around €70 per month for television alone, which is a lot of money (about $92).

Wow, is German TV own by the government? Otherwise how could a private company force every household to purchase their product? And what about the competition? How can you determine which provider gets your money?

Some Internet service providers have arrangements with ESPN to allow their subscribers to view a variety of sports programming for free on espn3.com. Charter Communications is my ISP and I’m watching last Sunday’s Barcelona Open tennis finals (go Rafa!) now. Very cool. In the USA, American NFL football is the main problem. Most of the games are not available via IP. For me, NASCAR racing is another thing that isn’t available via IP.

I would like to add CWTV to the list, cwtv.com (US only) and Voddler.com for Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland). They steam old films and series for free, the latest releases have to be paid for.

Does free Hulu have R or X rated shows that are accessible? Not wanting any of that junk. Any ideas on something that would work for us? Currently we have basic cable, which is fine and keeps out access to HBO an Cinemax type shows, but wanting to save some money. Really need some direction on which way to go. Thanks!

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Nice post as I did not know too much about these options. Question: What should be your computer specs be on this. Should you have a I-3 pentium or I-5 or above and what about RAM; at least 8 or more or what?

Steven, it depends on a couple of factors that include your computer’s performance but also your bandwidth and the quality of the stream. Adobe for instance states that for 720p streams you should have at least a Pentium 4 3 GHz processor, 128 MB of RAM and 64 MB of VRAM, for 1080p it recommends an Intel Core Duo 1.78 GHz or equivalent, 128 MB of RAM and 64 MB of VRAM. Note that these are recommended hardware configurations for Windows.

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